New system!!! Suggestions Welcome

Ok it\'s time to junk my 3 year old pc; I need a new rig for Hl2 (as I have yet to play the game until I have system that meets my satisfaction) and all the new incoming pc titles.  Whenever I build a PC I always look into a balanced system in terms of price/performance.

Here is what I ordered so far:

-:AMD64 +3500 939 (90nm aka Winchester core)

-:OCZ 3200 EL Platinum Edition Rev 2 (uses the Samsung tccd chips aka the new Winbound bh5 replacement)

-:MSI Neo Platinum 2 NF3 ultra 939AM64(best overclocker board)

-:BFG OC 6800GT

-:Customized by my specifications( to be optimized for amd64 system), PC power and cooling 510 deluxe ($80 extra for the custom job)


-:Coolermaster Hyper 6 Heatsink  [SIZE=8]----->[/SIZE]

Looks like it will last you several years, great setup.  That HSF looks like a monster but Zalman just came out with an 120mm version of their copper flower if you want less noise.

Any thoughts on a sound card?  I\'ve been eyeing the Audiotrak Prodigy 7.1 as a good balance between listening to music and gaming.

Prodigy is an excellent sound card; both it and the M-audio revolution 7.1 and 5.1 use the same chip, there ENVY24-HT. Which ever one u get you can\'t go wrong.

Personally I have owned the revo 7.1 for over 1 year and its sound quality is clean, and accurate. The last creative card I ever purchased was 5 years ago. I refuse to buy CL because they are always behind the curve in terms of sound quality and innovative features. However Creative has bought out and destroyed the mainstream gaming soundcard market. They are a monopoly and eventually I will probably get one 2 years from now as a gaming card. There is no more competition left, CL\'s last competitor sensura which both the revo and prodigy use for the gaming dsp was purchased by CL 7 months ago for 6 million. So that means no more support for the sensura builds.

Audigy 2 is still crap, it resamples Redbook or mp3 to 48khz, plus to much noise interference in there sound card pcb layout design, and bloated half ass drivers.

Just to further illustrate creative labs monopoly, there audigy 4 still resamples, uses the same dsp EAX, other then new external features it the same card recycled.

The only thing left to save the gaming Sound Card industry is custom made sound engines for games, like carmack did for doom 3.

Oh as for the heatsink I plan to use 92mm panaflows.  The second choice to the Hyper 6 was the Thermalright XP-120, which is the second best(some would say the best) heatsink on the market.

Oh yeah just to illustrates the massive size of the hyper 6 i have attached this picture for you

Enjoy

man that thing is huge!

I\'d be afraid it would snap the CPU socket and heatsink mount right off my mobo

it has a thick steel back plate that you install underneath the socket on the otherside of the motherboard.

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Make sure you power it with an Antec TruPower PS.

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ahh lic, don\'t get him started...  I\'ve tested my Antec PSU with a MM and it checks out fine..

Thumbs up on the Revo 7.1.  I have the same card but the driver support is blah.  There is a definitedifference using kernel streaming or ASIO to a pre/pro, resampled 44.1->48 sounds so computerized.  As for the card itself we were promised DVD-A play upon release with a later driver version but M-Audio never came through and left us with crappy drivers and a semi-crappy cp.  I hear the Prodigy natively supports Kernel streaming with its drivers & cp, something M-Audio will probably never do.

About the 92mm fans on the heatsink, is it a different version than this one because it says it uses 80mm fans.  I have to say it looks like it should take 92 but I may be wrong.

ps- here\'s a pic of the new Zalman if you\'re still intersted:

The zalman is nice, it\'s main advantage is the it produces very little noise while still doing a good job at cooling.  

I should have explained myself further. You are correct that the heat sink natively fits 2 80mm fans, but I intend to use a 80mm to 92mm fan adaptor piece. Also i plan to have 2 92mm fans on it with air ducts so fresh cool air in and hot air out

As for the revo, I can\'t remember what the reason why they never gave us the 24/192 support, but believe me if they could they would, CL is the only company given permission to allow DVD decoding in conjunction with windvd 6.

AS for kernel streaming, my take it on it that KS is nothing but a hack(originally developed by Cakewalk) that is not really a supported data stream method. KS will not work with the new longhorn.

ASIO all the way for me, it\'s the offical standard and I use both Foobar2000 and qcd player.

what music player do u use THX?

Christ dude, why not just hook a leaf blower to it

it just might come down to that. Who knows i might just round up the cash for a mini jet engine to cool it.

foobar2k to an h/k 525 bi-wired to a pair of Infinity Alpha 20\'s, soon to throw this into the mix.  I like the warm sound of h/k and heard that amp at a geeky home theater meet, awesome sound for the price.

I use the player\'s embedded KS plugin.  KS was developed by Microsoft, so if it\'s not going to be in Longhorn it\'s because it\'s not needed.  That said ASIO is certainly more popular because it was developed for professionals and catered to their needs first.  Either bypasses windows Kmixer so input=output.  Hopefully this won\'t even be an issue in Longhorn.

M-Audio is relatively poor compared to montrous Creative and they didn\'t think the licensing fees would be worth it, the HTPC market is miniscule comapred to the Pro audio market which is what they focus on.  The Revo should be able to record 24/96 though.

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Donno how passive cooling would go against active cooling, why not just go water cooling if your gonna overclock.  Atm i\'m just using a silent booster cooler from Tt, my next rig will most likely be water cooling.